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| HOLIDAY (1938) |
A Columbia Picture
B&W, 95 minutes
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CAST
Linda Seton: Katharine Hepburn
Johnny Case: Cary Grant
Julia Seton: Doris Nolan
Ned Seton: Lew Ayres
Nick Potter: Edward Everett Horton
Edward Seton: Henry Kolker
Laura Cram: Binnie Barnes
Susan Potter: Jean Dixon
Seton Cram: Henry Daniell
Banker: Charles Trowbridge
Henry: George Pauncefort
Thayer: Charles Richman
Jennings: Mitchell Harris
Edgar: Neil Fitzgerald
Grandmother: Marion Ballou
Man in Church: Howard Hickman
Woman in Church: Hilda Plowright
Cook: Mabel Colcord
Woman on Staircase: Bess Flowers
Scotchmen: Harry Allen, Edward Cooper
Farmer's Wife: Margaret McWade
Farmer: Frank Shannon
Farm Girl: Aileen Carlyle
Taxi Driver: Matt McHugh
Steward: Maurice Brierre
Mrs. Jennings: Esther Peck
Mrs. Thayer: Lillian West
Grandfather: Luke Cosgrave
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CREDITS
Director: George Cukor
Associate Producer: Everett Riskin
Scenarists: Donald Ogden Stewart, Sidney Buchman
Based on the play by: Philip Barry
Photographer: Franz Planer
Art Director: Stephen Goosson
Associate Art Director: Lionel Banks
Set Decorator: Babs Johnstone
Editors: Otto Meyer, Al Clark
Sound Recorder: Lodge Cunningham
Musical Score: Sidney Cutner
Musical Director: Morris Stoloff
Costumer: Kalloch
Jewelry by: Paul Flato
Assistant Director: Clifford Broughton
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SYNOPSIS
Johnny Case, a terribly impractical young man, meets Julia Seton at Lake Placid and proposes to her. Later invited to her elegant New York mansion, he realizes that she is one of the Setons. At first, Julia appears to be his sort. However, when he outlines his plan about retiring young after making a bundle, and working again when he gets older, she balks. Julia's unconventional sister Linda vainly tries to pull the two together but, in so doing, falls hopelessly in love with Johnny herself. John finds a kindred soul in Linda for she not only understands him, but also has the courage to break away from her oppressively gilded existence to join him on his holiday.
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CRITIQUES
"By her performance as Linda, Katharine Hepburn seems highly likely to refute the argument of New York's Independent Theatre Owners Association, who claimed a month ago that her box-office appeal was practically nil. Highly responsive to the cajolings of pudgy, moon-faced Director Cukor, she gives her liveliest performance since appearing in his
Little Women."
- Life, 1938
"In the 30s, Katharine Hepburn's wit and nonconformity made ordinary heroines seem mushy, and her angular beauty made the round-faced ingenues look piggy and stupid. Here she is in her archetypal role, as the rich tomboy Linda in Philip Barry's romantic comedy. She had understudied the role in 1928 on Broadway and had used it for her screen test, and she was the moving force behind this graceful film version, which Donald Ogden Stewart and Sidney Buchman tailored for her and which George Cukor directed. In the pivotal role of a man who wants a holiday in order to discover his values, Cary Grant manages to make a likable and plausible character out of a dramatist's stratagem."
- Pauline Kael, The New Yorker
"George Cukor's masterful 1938 film of Philip Barry's play about a society girl (Katharine Hepburn) who falls for her sister's charming, eccentric fiance (Cary Grant). The light comedy achieves perfection, but beneath it lies Cukor's serious concern for the ways in which we choose to live our lives. There are a thousand nonconformist comedies, but only one Holiday."
- Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader
"Marvellous 'sophisticated comedy' about a prototype dropout (Grant in one of his best performances) who takes a rich upper class family by storm: arriving engaged to the conventionally snobbish younger daughter (Nolan), stirring up latent doubts and resentments through his carefree disregard for material proprieties and properties, he ends up by showing the yearningly dissatisfied elder sister (Hepburn) the way to a declaration of independence. Despite some very funny barbed dialogue, mostly centering on two clashing couples among the engagement party guests (one liberal, the other proto-Fascist), the film is less a satire on the rich than an acknowledgment that privilege has its drawbacks; its key scene, accordingly, takes place in the nursery playroom, a place redolent of childhood hopes and dreams, which Hepburn and her unhappily alcoholic brother (Ayres) unconsciously use as a retreat from their unwelcome social obligations. Often underrated by comparison with The Philadelphia Story (both are based on plays by Philip Barry), but even better because its glitteringly polished surface is undermined by veins of real feeling, it is one of Cukor's best films."
- Tom Milne, Time Out
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HOME VIDEO AVAILABILITY
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Lobby card
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Poster
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Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant
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Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn
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Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn
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Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant
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Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn
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Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant
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In rehearsal: Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant
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In rehearsal: Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn
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